Thanks very much for your help, it's appreciated. I managed to figure it out in the end, there was a problem with my code. I have implemented some filters to work with server side and that was at fault. They're working now although not perfectly. They are ordinary ajax/php dropdowns and datatables performs a column search based on the selection. Can see them here

Can anybody point me in the direction of more accurate searching in columns using server side? Currently it brings back results that aren't an exact match. I understand I need regex searching but are there any examples of code I would need to implement it?

Just to add to what Colin said, the demo server-side processing script for DataTables uses a wildcard search - %searchTerm% to match in SQL. You can remove the % signs if you only want an exact match. You don't need regex for that with server-side processing.

You are using server-side processing (from above - is that correct?). If so the search process is entirely up to yourself and it isn't documented. Only the client / server communication is documented to allow implementation on any server-side platform.

Our suggestion above is that you remove the wildcards from your SQL search term (again assuming you are using server-side processing).

I am using server side. The JS column search function is being passed a value which it's using to search the column, but it seems to me it isn't searching for an exact match. I don't think I'm using wildcards in my sql term. It is

No - that doesn't look like you are using wildcards, but it also doesn't look like a complex enough SQL statement to actually implement server-side processing. It also doesn't actually include any WHERE condition!